Let’s have an argument about Final Fantasy XIII-2

BeefJack: "The Final Fantasy series always has had a habit of dividing people. So instead of a straight-up FINAL FANTASY XIII-2 preview, we thought we’d get our resident Final Fantasy fans to have a bit of an argument about it. Will it be awesome? Will it be shocking? Yuliya Geikhman and Mark Ankucic were on-hand to have a scrap."

I'm sick of arguing. I just want a decent and well thought out JRPG on the PS3.

Of course given market, the mentality of devs to either be pretentious and self-delusional as they pull plots out their @$$ w/o going anywhere near an actual story writer, being focused on loli and overly young characters who walk everywhere, I'm just F***ed as a fan of the genera.

I guess I'll add my perspective which seems to be unique on these boards.

Final Fantasy XIII was my first Final Fantasy game. When I saw the trailers at E3 2006, I was hyped and thought the game was going to be GREAT. (By the way those trailers still look better than the actual game did.) When I played the finished product I thought that it was good, not great, but good.

The production values were great, the soundtrack, art direction were awesome. The story-telling and linearity were the points that let me down.

While playing the game, I looked for journal changes after every event and read those changes as soon as I saw them. So I kept up with the story as it was happening. The problem is that the story wasn't very good.

All of our characters were pawns who never became players. They never developed any strategy or deliberately attempted any objective to advance their own motives. Our characters just ran.

It seemed like it all the important pieces of the story were happening somewhere else. We should have been seeing this story from different places than what we actually saw. We should have seen Fal'cie deliberations on Cocoon. We should have seen Cid Raines politic-ing. All we saw was our characters running in a straight line trying to get to safety, until Barthandelus (spelling?) GAVE them, still pawns, a ship back to Cocoon.

Moreover, the game didn't answer any questions, at all. 1) Why was Anima on Cocoon? 2) Why did Barthanelus die at the last fight, they had killed him twice before? 3) What was their focus exactly? Serah's focus? 4) Why did they come out of crystal stasis? Why were their brands gone? I've heard that the books say the the goddess Etro, who was never even talked about in the game, released them. So it was a Deux ex machina in both senses. 5) What does Etro have against Fang and Vanille? I'm sure those two would like to live out the rest of their lives eventually. She woke up everybody else, both Pulse and Cocoon L'cie. Why not those two?

I am not put off by the idea of a FFXIII-2. But it should be about the same characters. The original XIII left lots of loose-ends and unanswered questions. When I see a new main character, I am not encouraged because that creates even more questions, and we have enough questions; we need answers.

Now I'm thinking...Who is this guy? Isn't that Serah? Damn, that dress is short? Where is Snow? Aren't they married? What the hell is this game about?

I don't more people or more questions. The original story hasn't been told yet. It's more like end of FFXIII wasn't the end but rather then beginning. If XIII-2 isn't going to be about finding answers to addled mess that was left in FFXIII then it is doing more damage, those resources should be spent on DLC that does provide answers.